Tales from
under the mask, behind the curtain, and
through the looking glass

by David Rosiak(with Rachel
Hyland)

Who is the Hollywood Geek?

David Rosiak is a screenwriter, living and working in Hollywood. Each month he
brings us tales of navigating the murky waters of filmmaking,
shares the ups and downs and explains how very wrong things can go between script and screen...

In this issue, with nary a vampire
creation to his name (he prefers werewolves), he instead gives
his very firm opinion on Twilight, True Blood, and
even Buffy...

It started like this. A Facebook Status Update along the
lines of “Stephenie Meyer is the stupidest, most pointless
lackwit in existence and should have her face ripped off by
ravening, rabid squirrels while Alan Ball stands by,
laughing with maniacal glee.” (Or something of the sort.)

Then came the rebuttal. “Oh, don’t be like that,
Twilight’s not so bad. Sure, it’s not high literature or
anything, but it’s an enjoyable read and has a fun take on
vampire mythology -- plus, the movies are at least faithful
to their source, unlike that excuse for a Sookie Stackhouse
story Ball calls True Blood.”

And then came this…

BETTER THAN BUFFY

It’s not just that Twilight isn’t high literature
-- it's not even literature at all. It’s lurid, poorly
developed melodrama designed for prepubescent girls and
women with a skewed sense of relationships (why act for
yourself when a hot, hunky guy can solve everything?). It
reflects Meyer’s skewed, wonky “religion” to a tee and
encourages values that should have been left behind a
century ago. Not to mention it’s horrendously written -- at
least J.K. Rowling can tell a compelling story. Meyer has no
idea how to do so -- witness the ridiculous non-structure of
New Moon. The woman’s an idiot. And her
take on vampires isn’t fun -- it’s stupid and lame.

I liken the phenomenon to the brief love affair adolescent
girls had with Hanson. Most of them are too ashamed to admit
it now, and the backlash is already happen with Meyer’s
books. My writing partner has a sixteen-year old daughter
who used to adore the Twilight books. Now she and all of
same-aged friends openly mock them. The studio is smart to
push these films out as fast as possible -- they know that
it’s nothing more than a fad. And fads may flare up
brightly, but they burn out quickly.

I’m deeply offended by Meyer’s assertion that women are only
defined by their male counterparts. I’ve written quite a few
female characters in my time, and I’ll lay serious money on
the fact that I understand the female psyche far more
intricately than that simpering housewife, to whom husbands
and children are the Alpha and the Omega.

Her work is themeless, poorly structured and peopled with
shrill, one-note characters. Her prose is formulaic and
uninteresting (sure, it’s easy to read, but so are “Dick and
Jane” books) Her work has nothing whatsoever to say -- it’s
vapid fantasy for impressionable tweeners and bored
housewives exactly like Meyer herself. Truth be told, the
bulk of her readers are undereducated and not well-versed in
real world relationships. Who cares if she’s popular for
this brief instant? Abysmal films like Norbit and
Big Momma’s House raked in tons of cash; popularity
isn’t a signifier of quality.

As for True Blood, familiarize yourself with the
word “adaptation.” Movies and TV shows are different than
books, and when you follow the written page like scripture,
you end up with Chris Columbus’s Harry Potter films. I’m
sick of whiny fanboys bitching when things are
altered for
the sake of cinematic clarity, as it shows a sense of
obsession and utter misunderstanding on the part of
individuals who have absolutely no idea how to tell a story
in different formats. In the case of Harris’ work (and yes,
I’ve read them) Ball has actually bettered the
books in his adaptation -- no surprise there, really, as the
books weren’t that good to begin with. He’s given us deep,
intriguing characters and a genuinely provocative (and most
of all, adult) story.

There’s really no comparison between it and Twilight
-- it’s better in every conceivable manner.

And here’s where you’re gonna really go crazy – it’s better
than Buffy, too. Unlike Whedon’s work, its
characters don’t all speak in the same voice, and it hasn’t
betrayed its characters for the sake of luring in new
viewers (hey, we’ve decided Willow’s suddenly gay… oooh,
here’s Dawn, an utterly useless character to appeal to the
tweeners!).

I’m not a fanboy. I feel no blind obedience to the genre. I
come at things as an artist trying to genuinely say
something and as such, I have a great love for the
reflective (and often transgressive) power of art. Indeed, I
think the overwhelming internet fanboy culture has
altogether weakened literature and cinema over the past
decade. Point of fact, I mostly despise fanboys
(particularly the idiotically obsessive Browncoats -- sure,
Firefly was fun, but it’s been repeatedly lapped on
both a philosophical and fun level by Ron Moore) who tend to
focus only on superficial, surface qualities of a piece of
work -- they concentrate on the “cool” rather than the
provocative.

I don’t want sheer escapism. I want to be stimulated and
provoked. I want to walk away from something with a new and
intriguing perspective. I want metaphor and allegory. That
doesn’t mean that everything has to be Schindler’s List,
but I don’t feel the need to waste my time with sheer fluff
anymore. I find the phrase “turn your brain off” to be
insulting. Might as well say “act like an idiot.” It’s the
same effect. As far as we know, this is the only life we
have, and exposing yourself to the same thing ad nauseum is
a crime against your mind.

I have no patience for superficial readings of art. I spend
my days going over theme, symbolism and meaning. I don’t
read fanfiction, I don’t read tie-in books, I don’t read
“fun” series, because, again, I don’t want simple escapism.
Genre fiction and cinema is at its best when it acts as a
prism to reflect real world issues and cultural mores. I
enjoyed the first three seasons of Buffy due to the
fact that Whedon was clearly interested in applying standard
horror tropes to the high school experience -- it was an
interesting metaphor. Seasons 4 through 7 lost this due to
his involvement with other projects, and the dropoff is
stark and obvious.

This is part of why I adore True Blood. Because,
unlike Charlaine Harris, Alan Ball has an actual artistic
voice. He has something to say, and it’s filtered through
her basic framework. Ball is known for pushing the envelope
on subject matter that stimulates him. He’s considerably
expanded and deepened the characters. Characters don’t have
to be likable (witness the wondrous Alex in A Clockwork
Orange -- he’s repellent, but always watchable);
rather, they have to be interesting. And the combination of
Ball’s exceptional writing and Paquin’s bravura performance
make the character of Sookie Stackhouse endlessly
interesting. She seems so much more flawed and
real than in
Harris’s novels, even when she goes over the top. The major
problem with Harris’s writing is that it’s ordinary. Bland.
The allegories are bush league clichés compared to Ball’s.
He’s done a rare thing -- taken shoddy source material and
made something out of it that actually matters.

If all you want is base entertainment, more power to you.
Art is obviously subjective, and different people take away
different things. Me, I want more than simple storytelling
-- I want to take away something genuine. Something human.
This is probably why I’m consciously drawing away from the
genre lately. Because it’s mostly turned into fanboy wank. I
get paid to write genre because I’m good at it, and I’m
happy to share my stories with the Geek Speak audience. Over
the past year, I wrote a lot of genre, and a host
of films will be coming out for the next couple of years
that reflect that. But there’ll be a time, not far in the
future, where I leave it behind completely for new artistic
goals. I recently wrote a straight comedy and found it
intensely satisfying. Also, I’m making my directorial debut
at the end of the year, and it’s a drama. One that
hopefully, in some small way, matters. At least, it matters
to me.

Unlike Twilight, which matters not at all. To
anyone.

And the debate raged on… “Are you saying that Ron Moore,
as in Ronald D. Moore, the architect of the utterly
ridiculous Starbuck-is-an-angel, “All Along the
Watchtower”-is-a-galactic-reference-point fourth season of
BSG, is in any way superior to Joss Whedon even at
his (approximation of) worst? Are you
insane?”

And thus it will continue, ever an anon. All of this has
happened before, and will happen again.

See our Geek Speak review of
Hard Ride to Hell, written by David Rosiak, with
writing partner Matt Chernov,
here.

HARD RIDE TO HELL

Out now, on DVD!

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A -- dare we hope? -- compliment?